o.o; I understand I'm not the brightest lightbulb.

The height and width of what?

A table?
<table width="#" height="#">

An image

It's better to resize it in a program.

<img src="IMAGE.GIF" width="#" height="#">

If you resize it that way, it may look distorted. It'll also take the same amount of time to load because it's the same file size (even though you've resized it smaller... or larger).